The basic concept of this piece is that words are ordered and therefore restrictive imposing an inequality of power between the author and the reader. The example he used to demonstrate this was the Institute of Education website and the Boy Electrician novel. He laments the fact that the boy electrician is textual and therefore linear, whereas the new IoE has a series of graphics and links allowing the user to choose the information they want to see.
The novel forces the user to follow the tale in the order determined by the author, and not in any other order of their choosing. This seems to be a very simplified view because I cant help thinking that a novel is linear because time is linear! One event leads on to another event and then another - a tale has a beginning, a middle and an end. Taking any of these events out of order renders the tale nonsensical and therefore pointless! However a website that is a disparate collection of facts can be grouped together in some sort of order but these groups do not need to be linear.
They require different treatments because they are different mediums. He could be considered to be comparing apples and oranges!
Tags: images, Kress, visual artifact